Louise Haigh resigned as transport secretary this week after it emerged she had committed a fraud offence in 2013, falsely telling police that her work mobile phone was stolen in a mugging. In 2022, Starmer had declared to the Commons: ‘lawbreakers cannot be lawmakers’.
On Sky News, Trevor Phillips asked cabinet minister Pat McFadden if Keir Starmer had known about the offence before appointing her to the cabinet. McFadden denied having any knowledge outside of the public domain, saying he didn’t know ‘who knew what and when’.
He did imply that ‘new information’ regarding Haigh had come to light, but he claimed not to know what that was, saying he respected Haigh for choosing to resign because the offence would become ‘an enormous distraction for the government’. McFadden also claimed that the speed with which Labour dealt with this issue differentiated them from previous Conservative controversy.
Trevor Phillips tells Atkins: ‘This is a spectacular attempt to avoid answering the question’
New figures have shown that net migration to the UK hit a record 906,000 last year, much higher than previously thought.
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